Erroneous Actions of Late
by marapozsa
Summary: post-game. giftfic. Ashelia has lost nothing, though her cage is no longer simply in her mind.


**Erroneous Actions of Late**

a k a n t **h a e** - h i _m e_

**Authoress' Note & Disclaimer:** Hey, hey! Wonderful muse of mine, I must worship you for blessing me **twice** in one day.

Truthfully, I blame Zaz9-zaa0, whose fic Pax Versus is one of the best things I've read. It's up there with some of Mariagoner's fic, some Touch of Gray, SilverLocke980's My Choice...really, lots of things, and those aren't the only writers I must concede to when it comes to writing fic. The Final Fantasy XII fandom is blessed with some fantastic writers if you just look around, and the actual game is blessed with a beautiful plot, smashing characters, and (last, but not least) Ivalice itself!

Read on, my dear, to see why this fic has forced me to be so happy to make up for the lack of such happiness in this piece.

-

Ashelia cannot explain the feeling her gut that drives her so, and she has forgotten what the sun looks like.

It is not for lacking of trying. She has ever been the most determined one in her party, the one who will lead the battalions into war rather than let her generals do it for her, and it is this fierce dedication that makes her so beloved among her people. Her people are a quick-witted lot, burned down to what is neccessary by the desert's harsh landscape and the difficulties of revolution that Archades has yet to realize - not even the loss of their Emperor can compare to what her people have endured, though this may very well be the most biased statement she has ever let pass her lips. But even they - the people, ah, the people! - do not realize that their Dynast-Queen's throne (their throne as well, through her) has been usurped.

This is the worst of all signs that Ashe has yet to see, surpassing even the pain that drips in bloody red streaks from her arms and legs. There are bruises in the most intimate parts of her body. The rust on the bars of her cage is only shades lighter than the bottom of the structure, which is home to her refuse and the tangled mass of chains that buoy her legs and arms up when they could not have supported her weight otherwise. Ashelia was forever standing, except for when she was fed and given sedatives to deter her from escape.

Her jailors have deigned her unworthy of a better prison, and they think - no, perhaps they **know** - that she is now lower than filth. This is what she rages against - grime and filth and dirt, the same as anyone else who has had the misfortune to come under their analytic gaze. She is worth even less to those who have stolen her kingdom because she is a woman. Women are of little consequence to them, save for the simpering weakling they have instigated in her place. She bears no ring, her hair is different, and yet she can feign royal blood?

Perhaps Ashelia is wrong of her people. But because they are her only hope - even half of Rabanastre's youths would be enough to remove her from her prison and bring her back to her former glory - she must not falter in her belief. There is nothing quite so attractive to Death than a man, or woman, who has lost all hope. So long as she believes, Ashelia will live, whether it is as a half-dead mass of bones in her cage or a dazzling sovereign atop a golden bench, ruling subjects from the elegance of a palace.

These scars...actually, Ashelia finds that she enjoys them. She is not a sadist - far from it, she despises blood, its ugly shade and the sticky feel of it in her hair, and would rather spill her own than her people's, though she is forced to swallow this fear constantly - but scars are not demeaning to her in the least. Ashe is proud to carry these scars. They mean that she is not a porcelain puppet for other people. They mean that she is a true king, as her father knew she would be, a woman king and not a queen. Ashe (the former Ashe, the one who had never been on the inside of a cage that she could touch, or if she could she had forgotten) had once toyed with the idea of doing away with the idea of a consort, male or female.

But then she had remembered that her mother, a daughter of Landis like Basch was a son of that same country, had been just as instrumental during her father's reign. And when Ashe finds that the idea is no longer an enjoyable prospect, she is amused that she might once have been just like her mother...a queen, a queen, not the Dynast-Queen, and certainly no king of a country where the people expected their queen to be beautiful and pristine.

She is not pristine or beautiful. No longer does Ashelia dwell in front of the mirror, not even the one that her psyche shows her whenever her assessed borders between life and dream blur, because the mirror does not enhance her hope or her beauty. Ashelia knows now that the scars are her trophies, worth more than Rasler's medals were, and worth less than the life of any common footsoldier. They are the proof she will carry on her body forever and a day, if she wants it to, because though the scars may one day fade, Ashelia will never forget where they once laid.

If she ever takes a lover, Ashelia knows that it must be a man who will take her as she is, and without hesitation once he sees her body laid bare. He must know that she is not a fool, and that she will never surrender the throne over to him. But Balthier is a good liar, so Ashe knows that even if she does think that he might save her (if her people do not, because secrets must always be revealed), what satisfaction he can give her will always be tainted by the idea that the pleasure is forged, and the love shining in his eyes is a mockery of what must be in hers.

...no, she must find someone else.

As if they realize that the scars do nothing to her, that she might one day remember (as if she could forget, but she is finding that she is) what she has been through if she is ever let free, that she will somehow find a way to alleviate Ivalice of their presence, her captors heal those scars whenever they visit her, murmuring under their breath in wonder as they study one of the most profound cases of life through sheer willpower they have ever had the honor of examining. They back away when she stirs in her cage, looking out on a world of black save for where their robes shine like the sun, but then they step forward again when she looks away from these pseudo-suns, false like the moon and just as ethereal once they have allowed the needles to pierce her flesh.

This is but one of several injustices they have done her. There are others who would be even more demeaning to any other woman - strange injections with things that feel unclean when they enter her body, feeling the scars across her body break and bleed writhing ribbons of vermillion, the occasional phallus in her belly as she sleeps, leaving white stains on her already tattered garb - but it is the theft of the people that she loves (rather, their now misdirected belief, but Ashe can no longer tell the difference), that they _dare_ deceive them so...that is what infuriates Ashe enough so that she lives although she should be dead.

This injustice must be avenged.

(She cannot have children, so it is not the violation of her body that enrages her so. Ashelia has never told Balthier this, nor Basch, nor Vaan, all of whom she loves, but Fran knows and understands why she does not have her monthlies as even viera do, as even the aegyl and the feol do. Penelo does not know. Penelo has always been too young to know.)

And even she, who was once queen and knew only a microscopic amount of what she wanted to know and could still use that knowledge to her advantage, does not know who they are. The men who sully her, the women who trill and laugh at the would-be corpse: she cannot see their faces, and there are magicks cast on her (the Mist makes her go crazy at times, and there are bite marks on her arms where Ashe has tried to gnaw at the chains) so that even if she cares to be curious, she cannot fulfill her vicious desires.

Tragic is not the word Ashelia considers worthy of describing her loss of sight. She is blind now, yes, and now that the gods have abandoned her, Ashe knows that her eyes will never be as they once were, even if the magicks are removed andd she is no longer a walking - more standing, more imprisoned - dream. Her captors have deemed to have them removed, those eyes, to see if that will break her. She hears it from her warden, a man with a tongue like Balthier's (at first it sounds like him, though there is no mention of the title of leading man) but more serpentine and biting in its use. He sows salt in her wounds whenever the opportunity comes.

His hands are rough when he dares manhandle her, but he always stops before the marks he make are noticeable on her thighs, on her breasts, her arched spine. And even this does not make Ashe cry, because she knows that he will die one day, and hopefully it will be at her hands.

They will all die, she decides. And even though she may never allow herself the delight of doing it with her bare hands, perhaps even gloved in the blood of their predecessors, there will come a day when they will regret the work of their lives and the injustices they have done her will be repaid in full.

("What you reap, fools, so shall you sow.")


End file.
